"The p, I should add for your guidance, is silent, as in phthisis, psychic and ptarmigan," the eponymous hero of PG Wodehouse's Leave it to Psmith explained. He could have added many dozens of those p's at the beginning of English words. Many thousands of other English words bear the burden of unpronounced consonants, whose only function is to confuse schoolchildren into even more spelling mistakes than is their custom. For instance, a recent report found that only around half of English 11-year-olds could correctly spell the word doubt. A survey a few years ago concluded (I could have told them and saved them the money) that the more a word was spelled like it was pronounced, the more likely it would be spelled correctly.

Last week the Portuguese parliament voted to reform and simplify the spelling of Portuguese. Among other changes, silent consonants are to be abolished. Just like that. Baptismo is to become batismo, optimo otimo, acto ato. In addition, where the same consonant is repeated, one of them will have to go. Acção will turn into ação. It is true that the motive for the reforms was due as much to political as to orthographic necessity. Portugal had found its classical, historically-based spellings out of step with those of the newer, more logically-minded Portuguese-speaking nations, especially Brazil, with its population - at 190 million - 17 times greater than that of its mother country. In future, the worldwide Portuguese family of 230 million will be able to speak, or at least spell, with one voice.

What struck me was the ease with which the whole thing was done. There were many protests and petitions against the reforms, but in the end they were passed in parliament by a substantial majority. In a few years' time a mass of p's, c's and h's will be no more.

There is no reason why we should not copy their example. Instead of bemoaning children's waning spelling aptitudes, and blaming teachers, syllabuses and the malign effect of text messaging, let us put the blame where it belongs: an insane spelling system. I am not suggesting we impose a completely new alphabetical structure on English orthography, as George Bernard Shaw and others have advocated. Shaw's proposed alphabet was a complicated affair, almost impossible to learn. The Portuguese way is more of a tidying up operation, eliminating incongruities and inconsistencies. We could do the same, with the help of a few English profs, and if we ended up with a lot of seudo-sychopaths with soriasis and siatica writing a senario about rathful sychologists rapping reaths rongly - well, at least schoolchildren will be spelling better.

I have wormed Shaw into this item if only to repeat his famous example illustrating the absurdity and inconsistencies of English orthography. How do you pronounce the word spelled "ghoti"? The answer is "fish" - the "gh" as in laugh, the "o" as in women, the "ti" as in motion.

· The first thing you see is its neon sign, a welcoming confection of brash pink and green, more Las Vegas than east London. The words Walthamstow and Stadium are separated by a running black greyhound. In August, the sign will be switched off for ever. The Stow will be no more, and I will mourn it, a little. I occasionally used to go to the dogs there, during the 80s and 90s. In the main stand you could get tasty steak and chips, and if you didn't feel like wandering down to place your wager with a bookie by the side of the track, you could stay at your dinner table and order your bet through the elderly waitresses. It had a good feeling about it, once described to me as a "fast-disappearing London upper-working-class atmosphere".

The trouble with greyhound racing as a sport is the racing itself. Every race - and there are usually 12 or 14 in an evening - has exactly the same number of contestants - six. The colour of their jackets depend - always - on the trap from which they emerge in pursuit of the electrical hare. Number 1 wears red; then there's blue, white, black and orange, with number 6 in black and white stripes. Races are over very quickly, usually between 30 and 45 seconds. Nail-biting tension is rare. Nor is there any realistic possibility of picking a winner. All greyhounds look the same to the uninitiated, and their form is even more unpredictable than that of racehorses.

More recently, serious punters have defected to the betting shops, audiences have declined, costs have risen, and the Chandler family - which has owned the stadium for its entire 75 year existence - received an offer from a development company.

If The Stow can't make it, what future is there for other tracks, and for the sport itself? There were once 33 tracks in London alone; there are now 29 in the whole country, only three of them, once Walthamstow goes, within the M25: Wimbledon, Romford and Crayford. More than 4 million spectators a year still attend the races, and some stadiums are doing quite well. Yet I feel that the death of Walthamstow symbolises the beginning of the end of an era; not greyhound racing's golden age, which ended long ago, but its revival towards the end of the past century. The sport risks becoming the mere adjunct of betting, live audiences becoming almost irrelevant. Then many more stadiums will be praying for a developer's offer.

· This week Marcel read James Gaines's Evening in the Palace of Reason: "An entertaining dual biography of Johann Sebastian Bach and Frederick the Great, centred around their only meeting. The dictator was nicer than the musical genius". He narrowly failed to watch the game in which Olympique Marseille clinched a brilliant third place in the French football league.